No plan in place for return to normality

Post-Maduro, the US is grappling with tricky questions about how the country transitions back to normality.

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In controversial comments soon after Maduro was deposed, Mr Trump said the US would “run” the country. A day later, he said elections should take place only after the country is stabilised.

“We should run the country with law and order. We should run the country where we can take advantage of the economics of what they have - which is valuable oil and valuable other things,” he told the New York Post in an interview on Jan 4.

He also said he was sceptical whether opposition figures, including Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Corina Machado, had the public support needed to lead the country.

It is also unclear if Maduro’s vice-president and now his successor, Ms Delcy Rodriguez, is cooperating with the US or mobilising supporters for resistance.

In a news conference on Jan 3 after the attack, Mr Trump said Ms Rodriguez had indicated she was willing to work with the US. That claim rang hollow only a few hours later, when Maduro’s successor called out the US action.

In a national broadcast made soon after Mr Trump’s comments, she called the US actions “barbaric” and demanded Maduro’s return.

Reacting to the apparently hostile stance, Mr Trump, with characteristic belligerence, said she would “pay” if she did not comply with US wishes.

“If she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro,” he said in a Jan 4 interview to The Atlantic magazine.